[0:00] This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for Sous vide by Chef Steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. This is Mike Edison, host of Art Census of Seizure. You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwood, Brooklyn. If you like this program, please visit HeritageRadionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:27] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold. Cooking, you choose coming to you live on Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12, to roughly 1245 or one o'clock or so. On the Heritage Radio Network, for Robert's

[0:42] Pizzeria in... Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined, as usual, Witness Dasia, the Hammer Lopez. How you doing today, Stas? I'm good. are you? Fine. Got Dave in the booth. Also fine. Good. Calling your questions to 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. It's been a while since we've all been in the studio together, right? Yeah. Um, That's nice. Last week I was at the Harvard, given the talk, and then the week

[1:10] before you were at the sweet sweet Naples. Yeah, yeah. All right. So let's get right into it. We have a bunch of stuff to catch up with today. Oh, you done any interesting cooking? No. You're like rippety freaking doodod. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. See, did I cook anything for the Harvard lecture? No, not really, right? I don't know. Did I even serve anything at the Harvard? You know what I did do at the Harvard lecture? I showed off the prototype of the centrifuge. talked about the relative difficulties of making a product. Anyway, all right, let's get to today's questions because we have a lot. Nastasia is Nastasia, by the way, is getting ready. Judy from Malden sent us some cookies to taste today. So she's opening them now and reading the description so that we can have a comparative tasting later. Ooh. So Dave, what's that what's that signify there? I was you opening the box? Oh, nice. I like that ID in there or something? First of all, I don't think we actually talked about this. Dave, did I talk about salt last week at all? You weren't here last week. The week before that? I can't remember that. All right, here's the thing. This is an interesting fact that came to my head, that when I was kids and when, you know, people my age were kids, everybody in their house cooked with the cylindrical boxes of iodized salt, like we're all familiar with that cylindrical box of iodized salt,

[2:39] right? So as soon as I started, you know, cooking, I've always 100% exclusively used kosher salt, diamond kosher salt, in fact. And so like in my house, and by the way, my kids, you know, rarely do they eat out at restaurants. It's mainly stuff that we cook at home, and 100% of it is made with kosher salt. Kosher salt contains no iodine. There's no iodine. So I'm wondering if, you know, I mean, my kids,

[3:11] luckily, they eat enough seafood, you know, that not as much as the triple 6 mafia with the shrimp and the iodine poisoning. That's like my favorite, my favorite, uh, like rhyme ever of

[3:23] theirs, and I, I eat so many shrimp. I get iodine poisoning. I love that line. That's from sipping on some syrup. But the, anyway,

[3:33] like, uh, point me, yeah. The intro to that song is kind of amazing. Don't you think so, Dave? I don't know. We're probably not allowed to play it because we didn't buy any rights to anything, but We don't have that kind of money. Yeah, rhyming shrimp with I believe shrimp is rhymed with with pimp, right? There's only, like, we have to look up, look up the exact lyrics. That's not the important part. The important part is that we, um, I wonder whether we are raising a generation of people with not enough iodine. Probably not. We're over vitamin and everything that we that we consume, right? I mean, as Americans, we're pretty much over vitamins, but it's just something to consider. The fact that we have reduced the overall iodine in

[4:14] our diet to the extent that we cook with kosher salt, which for me is 100%. Or mald and salt, which also has, you know, not, I don't think it has a lot of iodine in salt. I mean, it is sea salt. So it has some iodine, but I use relatively little malden salt compared to kosher salt. Okay, A.T. Dustin wrote in showing a New York Times article that came out yesterday. Do you read The Times, Nastasia? No. No. There's an article talking about how in the 60s, the sugar industry paid money to scientists to say that articles that were pointing to a review article that said that the people who were saying that sugar increases your risk of cardiovascular disease were

[4:56] wrong and that they were basically being paid by the sugar industry. And so everyone is, you know, up in arms that the sugar industry would do this thing. Here's the thing. And, you know, they had like Mary Nessel was quoted in it. guy named Stanton Glance, who was big known for was on the paper, actually, because it just got released in, I think, in Gemma. And it, you know, was very critical. He was a big tobacco anti-tobacco guy. Here's, you know, here's my take on it. What do you think happens? Like, do you, like, what does what does what do we all think happens here in America or anywhere?

[5:32] A corporation makes a product. Sugar. What do they want? You to buy it? What do they not want? You to think that it is unhealthy? So clearly, they're going to do what they can at any point to try to convince people

[5:51] that that their product is good, right? And that just stands the reason. And so, I think, you know, the other thing is, it's painting it out to look, and it is actually really sinister, if you read it. They weren't paid that much money. It was like $50,000 in today money to 2 scientists, to publish a review article. By and large, every, here's what I think. Like, Yeah, like their recommendations were the, like, those

[6:18] scientists recommendations, uh, regarding, um, fat, because they were, they were very much, uh, in kind of the, uh, Ansel Keys, fat is the bad

[6:26] thing and not sugar, uh, thing. They probably believed what they were saying. Yeah, they took money. Yes, they gave drafts of their paper back to the sugar industry. Yes, they did not disclose it. No one disclosed stuff like that at the time. It was kind of the Wild West. Should it have been disclosed? Yes, is it now? Should be often is. But the fact is, is that there is a false belief among us that scientists are somehow dispassionate, that science, nutritional

[6:55] science, especially, that it is somehow non-biased, or should be non-biased. Every paper that I have read on nutrition is intensely

[7:05] biased one way or the other. So I'm sure that these sugar scientists didn't go to like, you know, Billy and Joe neutral to write a review article saying that sugar, you know, did not contribute to cardiovascular disease, whereas fat did, I'm sure they didn't choose neutral

[7:25] people. They probably chose people who already believe them anyway. And this is how stuff works now. Scientists have particular views. They're searched out by industry, because they have particular views, and then money does or doesn't change hands, but even if money doesn't change hands, the scientists still are biased towards their

[7:41] opinion. And then if a research, if a corporation wants to use their research, they will anyway, to publicize it. So I think the whole thing is wretched. I think, you know, this just points out that I think most nutritional science, on either side, if there are 2 sides or 5 sides, all 5 sides, is all wretched and horrible, because it all starts with fundamentally,

[8:02] typically the stuff that I've read, skewed data, interpreted through the lens of people that have a preconceived notion of what they think the answer

[8:08] is. And I think, you know, that's one of the big differences between, um, you know, people who do long-term predictive studies or like come up with scientific theories that can be easily

[8:19] tested and confirmed and these kind of like large scale, uh, multifactorial uh, epidemiological studies. anyway, that's my thoughts. I'm sure some people are going to think I'm a jerk for Sam, but that's just the truth. Bobby, White wrote in. So Bobby wrote in about white zin. Remember we were talking about white Zen when we were talking about that stuff. And he said, many Sonoma wineries now make a dry rosé that is labeled as rosé without a great breakdown, but it's often just

[8:46] a Zinfandel or an Italian field blend made predominantly out of Zinfandel. There are plenty that tastes like a serious wine. My wife made 4 barrels of dry infidel rosé at work in 2013 and pulled off a barrel for our wedding, which was

[8:59] excellent, though it might be a bit old at this point. I can open a bottle and give it a try and send it in if you're interested, but it should not be hard to find a decent example from Sonoma out where you live. Bobby. Hey, sure, try it. I would love to take someone's wedding wine. That'd be sweet. Tasted if it's still, I mean, not sweet, dry, but you know what I'm saying. Okay. Um, let me see. So are we ready to get to the cookie tasting or do you want to do that? take some questions, go to the break and come back. You're the hammer. What do you want to do? All right, so let's do a couple more questions and then you decide what you want to do. David needs to get in on this too. there's too many. This has like too many. We're all going down to go. So now we're going back to Les Claypool. Nastasia Lopez. First and only time has ever quoted Primus on the air. In fact, it's the 1st time I've ever heard her. because you said that exact. Yeah, but still, like, you hate whenever I quote lyrics, you hate it. all those cookies for for the troops. So that's stuck in my head. Remember that? Too many cookies. Oh, good. Are getting cracked in the dark. Anyway, like, yeah, so like unbelievable for Nastasia too. Now I have the whole thing in my head. Too many cooka cooka cookies. So many cookies. All right, so we're gonna taste them. I don't think people, people listen to pride. David, do people listen to privacy anymore? Yeah, like on the festival scene, I think. Oh my god. What's the festival scene? Is that like, you know, like Bonnaroo, all that nonsense? I thought you meant like, they're like a big festival van. When someone says festival, I think Renaissance festival. That's where I had my 14th birthday party. At a Renaissance festival? Yeah, nerd alert. Nerd alert. Now, that's what you need the siren, sirens floor. Me, me, me, mer. Like, like, those Renaissance festivals are some weird business. Did you get any dates at the Renaissance Festival? You mean like the kind that you eat? Yeah. Bad dates. Bad dates. Another one of our favorite quotes. Yeah, like our fourth reference to that. Not today, just in life. Only because you don't live at my house where it like comes up constantly. Like, whenever my cousins are over, it's nothing but Indiana Jones references, like, 100% of the time, like mixed up, like, all the movies mixed up differently, you know, and sometimes mixed up with other stupid things that we would we

[11:20] do. Okay, from Alan Snow. Hope Italy was good and the centrifuge is coming along. Last year, I sent a question about how to get the pectin levels down before the fermentation of Apple to make

[11:31] Applejack. Dave mentioned that he was going to answer the question next week a couple of times, but was too busy. If there's any chance, an answer of an answer because Apple's are almost here again. I'd be very grateful. Last year, I tried freezing to set a men out, the pectin, uh, uh, for set a men out, the pectin, um, but, uh, still had uh, 2 high of methanol levels, uh, when it was done and the apple

[11:52] jack was a headache. In the end, I wrote about the results and cut the heads off long. The other question I has, is it worth rotavapping a black trouble, truffle? I've been given one that seems pretty dried out and wondered if truffle vodka might be a way of getting the max flavor out of it. and in a way of storing it for use in dishes. And look, it should work. Like rotavapping the truffle should work. You know, I spoke to the truffle guys in Oregon who deal mainly the Oregon truffles, and they don't do direct seep stuff. They literally just put truffles in jars with things, but I think that's because they want to use the truffle again later. I don't think since we eat truffles, I don't think there's going to be anything that you're going to extract out that's bad

[12:29] uh, into the uh, into the vodka, and then I think, you know, you'll get most of those aromatic notes back out when you do

[12:36] uh, the rotavap. So, the answer is, I think you'll get a lot. I mean, I don't know what in a truffle. I mean, look, most of what's interesting about a truffle is the rum anyway, let's be honest, right? I mean, that's what that's what most what's interesting about it. So it should work. And I've read some papers online, not specifically the truffles, but on the

[12:53] cold, on the low temperature vacuum distillation of other mushroom aromas, and it seems to work well. All right? As for pectin, the call I remember getting in about pectin was trying to keep pectin during the process of keeping, which is

[13:09] process making cider where you actually induce a pectin gel to form after the juicing

[13:14] procedure to trap nutrients. And the reason you want to trap nutrients is so that the yeast die before they have a chance to ferment out all the sugar. So it so that the cider remains sweet without having to add sugar back to it. And for that, you obviously want to reinforce the pecting cause. So what they typically do is a lot of pectin methylestrase enzyme, which strengthens

[13:36] the pectin, let it sit for a while, and then they will, um, they will hit it with calcium chloride, uh, you know, if you're adding stuff, if you're wanting

[13:44] these people to add stuff, and then that'll cause that gel to really, um, firm

[13:48] up. The gel will trap what it's going to trap. It'll float to the top, skimmed off, ferment. But your question is quite different. It seems to me, what you want to do is just get rid of the pectin. And for that, I would just use Pectinex ultra SPL. I don't know, like, uh, have you tried that? and it's failed. Ultra SPL will wipe out the pectin, lick it T split. Like, and you can add it at the end of fermentation, which is, uh, you know, what I typically, I've done it both ways. I've added a pectin, some people had a pectin, a

[14:19] pectinex during the smashing procedure before crushing so that you increase the yield of juice out of the press. In fact, that's what there's a, there's one called spectnex smash. It's designed literally for that to increase the yield off of apples. Alternatively, I mean, you know, and if you're doing a press that way, you can add the enzyme early, right? I wanted, my problem was I was kind of, it was clarifying quickly. It was clarifying beforehand. So I actually let it ferment on with the suspended sediment and then knocked it out at the end. And for that, Pectinex ultra SPL is very good because it works in alcoholic environment. So you can add like a couple of milliliters per liter at the end of your fermentation time. It should settle out, uh, that, you know, as long as you, as long as it's not actively carbonated, which is going to keep popping the stuff off the top, once the carbonation level and the CO2 has died down and fermentation is slowed, all of that stuff will settle to the bottom with your

[15:15] yeast and you should be able to get rid of almost all of the pectin. Now, if you want to kill the pectin early because you think it's producing other products in it, right? I don't know this. I haven't looked it up, but if there are things that are producing methanol in your fermentation, then I would

[15:31] recommend juicing, adding the Pectinex at the get go. and then racking, right? And then, you know, you lose some at the bottom or you can do a separate fermentation of the kind of stuff that has the broken down pectin in it and then ferment the batch with no pectin in it by starting at the beginning. But even without a centrifuse, you should be able, depending on the apple variety. Some apple varieties don't settle very well at all. And some apple varieties settle quite well. But if you're doing a typical, you know, chumming them up in an apple grinder and pressing them, you're getting rid of a lot of the solids anyway, so then hitting it with the ultra SPL after that

[16:12] procedure, but before fermentation should work. So I don't know whether you're one of these people that um, kills the yeast and then, and then allows the wild yeast to do afterwards, but you at least have a day before it really starts ripping and

[16:23] roaring, and that's more than enough time to get the pectin to settle out. Anyway. What do you think? Okay. You're like, don't. Nastasi's like, don't care. Okay. They got a chat room question if you want to. Sure, what do you got? Actually, it's more like a request for New York restaurant recommendations from both of you. Oh, well, Nastasia should give the recommendations. No, don't eat out anymore. Since when? recommendations. When did you stop eating out? Month ago. What was the best place to eat months ago? Probably not relevant anymore. Why, are they close? I can't, I need to think. What kind of restaurants are they? Where are they coming from? I don't know. They're coming here, though, so. All right, well, nice. Well, so that's one that's one out of the way. Um, I mean, it depends on what you want, right? How much money? Oh, Chicago, I hear. Oh, yeah, it depends on what kind of restaurant experience you want. really. I mean, like everyone's all, everyone's, are they still, everyone's still hyped up about Pasquale Jones? What kind of pill are you taking, Stass? We're on the radio here. Pep, pep it up, pep it up. Give some answers. It looks like he's already going to Contra, which... Oh, you should totally go there. Classic video game. No. No, Contra is, uh, that's, uh, you know, my my friend's uh, fabulous. Fabian Von Husky and Jeremiah Stone. definitely go there. Where's that? That is in the lower East side on Orchard Street. like down, you know, close to Delancey. Yeah definitely go there. What kind of food? Good? Oh, that kind. Yeah, no, like, so they have 2 restaurants. They have wild air, which is like a natural wine bar situation where, you know, you order like tastings, like plates, and then they have where they have this incredibly crispy squid thing there, and then next door is Contra, which is their original

[18:08] or flagship one, and that's more of a tasting menu, where, not mean, like, you know, a flight. Like they bring, like, you get what you get and you don't get upset. You know what I mean? Both excellent. I've been several times. Cool. All right. So good choice. Um, We had a question from Ryan about from St. Louis about Confit. A local chef turned butcher offers confit chicken leg quarters to go. What's a chicken leg quarter? Did they mean the whole quarter of the back chicken, including the leg? I think that's what they mean. Do you think that's what they mean? I have no idea what a chicken leg quarter is. I think it's probably just the chicken leg with the thigh and that piece of the that piece of the skeleton in the back. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Like, if you were to take a chicken and be like, hey, how about you be 4 pieces of chicken instead of one piece of

[18:57] chicken like that? You know what I'm saying? And so you'd get the bread, 2 breasts, the 2 back leg things, and then the back, which you use for soup. Yeah? Yeah, that's what I'm going to assume we're talking about. He mentioned they were cooked at 180 degrees Fahrenheit for 72 hours using a circulator. I'm interested in replicating this at home, but have not seen any similar time and temperatures of this preparation online. Is it likely that I misheard the butcher's instructions or do you think that this time and temperature could yield great results? Also, would you recommend salting before the cook? Thanks for your time. Show's fantastic. Ryan from St. Louis. Yeah, if it's going to be a confit, you got assault it beforehand, or it doesn't taste like confit, right? So I would always go through the classic cure step with herbs and salt before you do your

[19:43] confit, and the salt, again, it's not just taste. The texture of the meat. I'm pretty sure, although have I done it without any salt at all? Look, salted. That's what it's supposed to be. That's what a coffee is supposed to taste like. Modern confees have a lot lower salt level than old school confees. Because in an old school comfy. It was salt and then cooking, and it was an actual preservation method. So you're looking at preserving something under grease. So the salt level in those cases needs to be high enough to prevent the growth of things like botulism. There's also, you know, contrary to what people say, you know, a decent amount of evaporation, not

[20:16] a lot, you know, not a boat ton, but enough because otherwise it wouldn't be bubbling now, would it? So the, uh, because that's what is evaporating, uh, water. The oil is not boiling. Anyway. So, one, yes, salt, two. I have never seen a recipe that is 100 and when you're at 180 degrees. You're up close to normal confit temperatures anyway, like 185 somewhere in there, Fahrenheit. This is in the 80s, somewhere in the 80s in Celsius land. And that is kind of normal confit temperature. And therefore, I would say it only needs to cook for normal confit time on the order of several hours or, you know, a little more, not a little less, a little

[20:59] more depending if you're on the lower side of that temperature. And as your temperatures drop lower, even a little bit lower, the times are going to extend longer and

[21:06] longer. When I start hearing things like 48, 72 hours, then I'm thinking you're cooking at much lower temperatures, down like 64 degrees Celsius, which I can't convert in my head.

[21:18] Uh, because that's the lowest thing I would call via, uh, chicken ad, still gonna, you know, it's, it's, but here's the thing. I've tested lower temperature confites in the 6465 Celsius range. And those ones you would have to cook for not for 72 hours, but for a long time. And I don't like them because they don't have the characteristic texture of confit. They're good. They're not overcooked, and they are tender, but they're not the same. My guess is that if you cook it for that long, it's going to be a little bit mushy. I would never do it for 72 hours. I don't see any benefit. I think you're gonna lose texture at that point. But that's me. Did I say enough about that? All right. So, uh, should we take a short break and come back uh, with some cookies on cookie cookie issue? issues? Yeah. All right. Write it back.

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[23:25] Welcome back to cooking issues. So we're doing a cookie tasting from Judy

[23:32] Malden, and she said to only unwrap them on air. So Nastasia has the mic down by the wrapper so that you can hear the fact that we are unwrapping it. Sorry, what's his name? Gritzer. Daniel Gritzer is the one that hates the noises. He made them when he was on air. What a, what a... I'm saying, like, you know. Okay, so there's a note on the cookie. What does it say? This one is a matcha butterscotch. Matcha and butterscotch. Do you like matcha in general stuff? Yeah. Do you like matcha ice cream or matcha the beverage or any form of matcha? And any form? Really? I'm quite surprised. Because other people like matchas, so I would assume that you do not. So Dave, you're gonna come in here and sit sit down for a minute, step away from the booth. this thing can run itself. All right. He's like, I don't really need to be here. can run itself. Okay. So, all right, so here, and we'll break this into into trunks. Now, Nastasius had these in her apartment for a couple of weeks, because things haven't worked out to the, you know, what they're supposed to. That's good. Step away from the mic when you're chewing. Good flavor. All right, going in. It's good. Yeah. I like matcha. It works. It's kind of light on the matcha, right? Yeah. It's light on matcha, heavy on the... Heavy on that. Well that's yeah, the butterscotching. Wait, what's the next one? By the way, so she's making these in. her whole shtick. what is it? What the next one, stuff? Matcha cover, cocoa, macadamia, green mango, cranberry. What? This is a 2nd matcha thing? Yeah. Hmm. Anyway, so her thing here is she's obsessed with, you know, we should get her a meeting with Christina Tozi because she is obsessed with Christina Tozi.

[25:18] She loves Christina Tozi. So she basically she bases all of these cookies on Tozi's base recipe for, I forget which one, the blueberry cream, blueberry cream. What's the next one? We have to, by the way, we have to go through... All right, well, get one of the next ones. All right, so while you're unwrapping this. pine nut. What? Green mango pineaut. open those ones. You open those while I'm answering the question. You're unwrapping these and taste it. By the way, that is not mouth noises. That is cellophane noises. So I don't want to hear any. Dave, Dave, our intrepid engineer, is doing that, but we can't all eat at the same time. So Dave, you take a bite of this, and you can discuss this as it happens, and I'll talk so that no one has to listen to just dead radio silence of mouth noises, which everybody

[26:03] hates. All right, well, well, uh, David's tasting these uh, cookies, uh, and then I'll taste them. I'm going to answer a question from Nick Devlin. Nick wrote into Twitter before. What's a reasonable deal for a hostino, hostino, by the way, is when you blend liquor and fruit? Uh, and then uh, with uh, with uh, Pectanex, uh, enzyme. It destroys a pectin, you spin it out and the centerfusion becomes clear again. What's a reasonable yield for a gustino? I'm getting around 85% yield using dried peach at 150 grams of dried peach per liter of booze,

[26:35] in a centrifugia, 330, 3300 Gs. I think we got enough of the crinkle, Stas. I'm going to move that in the microwave. Um, And I said, look, uh, you know, if you drive fruits out, it really lowers the yield. And it's because if you look at 150 grams of dried peaches, that's the equivalent, probably, of like 500 grams of peaches, so you're looking at like almost, uh, you're looking at probably at somewhere in the order of

[27:03] 250, 300 and something uh, grams of water loss. So, the peach, as you infuse it, and the liquor is gonna want to reabsorb that water. And so it's going to make your yield consequently lower. Also, because you are hydrating it and trying to break it down. The parts that aren't hydrated aren't going to get broken down by your pectinx enzyme that well. So I recommend always doing what's called a remuyage, and in a remuyage, what you're doing is you're remoistening this stuff and trying to extract out some of the stuff that you missed on the 1st go around. And you tried that and you said that when you blended the Remy back in, it ended up too weak. So here are my 2 recommendations. One, you don't want to use a lot. And when I'm saying when you're doing a remoyage, it's just a little bit of water, just enough to kind of resuspend it and make it a liquid again, add a little more enzyme, and then that will hopefully break down some of the stuff that didn't get broke down before and increase your

[27:59] yield dramatically. And also, before your 1st spin, blend it with the Pectinex, wait a while for the stuff to rehydrate again and then blend it

[28:11] again, to kind of rebreak up what's in there and really get it broken down fine.

[28:16] So waiting is really going to be your friend. And, uh, if you do a remo yash, that's a small amount, uh, and even maybe a little bit of liquor with a little bit of water, or just a little bit of water at the get go into the dried fruit before you do the

[28:29] blend to try to get some of the water level back up a little bit before you do

[28:33] your, um, before you do your spin. And so that's what I'm going to recommend. So how, Dave, how are those, which ones you can taste? I'm not sure Well okay. I just kind of ate what you handed me. All right, well, so They were good. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're a little cold. Where were you storing them? Those 2 are in the freezer. Okay, yeah. In her heart. Wow. That was a that was the green mango one. That's good, is the one to say? Okay, yeah, the mango one was the one I just had. No, read the hombre description. Oh, I have another cookie. Uh, ba, ba, ba, ba. El hombre. Chili pekin, guitar, chocolate. No, that's not the one I had. No, you haven't had that yet. Peanut butter chips and cocoa. So it's a spicy, it's a spicy chocolate, it's a spicy Reese's. It's a spicy recess cookie. Oh. Is it, in fact, a spicy recess cookie? It's like super spicy? Chili pekin is a nice spicy spicy. Well, in a minute, after, like, I'm done talking, then he can, all right, so you ready to talk? It's still chewing. This is the hard part about Judy about cookie tastings on the air. They take your mouth parts up. It's impossible to talk. the one that heated the wine tasting? What? I don't, yeah, she did not like the wine tasting. is true. All right. So, um, let me see. Uh, Brandon Hodgkins wrote in, uh, Hodgins wrote in about induction in Phoenix. I'm remodeling my, you're tasting these and you're letting me know what's going on, right? All right. remodeling my kitchen soon, which means I get to pick out a new cooktop. My home is not fitted for gas, so I'm going with an induction cooked up. I'm gonna just use the pavement. You ever been in summer in Phoenix does? Nasty, right? How about you, Dave? You ever been to? No, never been at all? No. I like Phoenix. It's like, well, Arizona, like a lot of old people, right? In Arizona? I mean, there's a Florida of the Southwest. Uh, yeah, I mean, especially there's certain there's like retirement communities there, but, um, they, like, if you grew up watching Bugs Bunny

[30:34] Roadrunner, it, like, really looks like that. Like there really are Suaro cactuses just like hanging around. So you like the desert and you're into that? I mean it's pretty cool. You know what I mean? Like, and, like, they're also, like, if you're into, like, Yosemite Sam and that kind of stuff. There are literally tumbleweeds flying around on the streets. Like, it's like real. You know what I mean? Like not in the city proper, but, It's no joke. What cookie is that you're handing? This is the MFing jungle. Oh, is this like a MFing is presumably the curse. Family show. Yeah, and that's that's also a matcha, matcha based. Okay. So, um, Anyway, back to back from Phoenix. Phoenix also, like, I don't know, like the main problem I have with Phoenix is it's in like a bowl shaped valley, and so it's easy for pollution to kind of get caught down there, but I haven't been there in over a

[31:24] decade. So I don't know if they've taken care of that problem. Why? What is this one? This one's the one with poison it. Nuclear war cheers. Oh, right. All right. So we'll try that. All right, what was the one I just had, the MFer? Yeah, it was a little sweet. So break break up. This is nuclear war cheeto, which I'm going to try after I answer this question while Dave is talking about the cookies. Okay. Um, instead, you can, you can make your comments in a 2nd here. I do not have gas. I'll be going induction. I have the oven separate so I can go with a standalone cooktop. I narrowed it down to 2 options and was wondering if I could get your opinions and advice. He's looking at the wolf CI, which would not stand for cooking issues. I believe it's probably cooktop induction. 36, uh, 5, 365, so it's 36 inches wide, 5 burner. And the Bosch, NITP, 66. Now, I like triple 6 because of the triple 6

[32:17] mafia, and of course, the demo reference. Satanic, yeah. Yeah. I don't know why anyone would make a cookware appliance with a number of the beast in it,

[32:25] but, although maybe if it sells well, like we should think of that for our stuff. We should change it from the centrifuge to a triple 6 thing. I don't know. Anyway. So you said Bosch seems cool because of the square zones on the set. So here, let me tell you the layout because you guys can't see what the hell's going on. I can't either, but I looked at it earlier. So, it turns out, induction, induction cooktops look like they've come a long way in the past couple of years. The way that the, um, the way that the, um, wolf is laid out is it has uh, 4 normal

[32:57] size burners on the side and then one large burner on the, on the left and one large burner on the right. Now, what's cool about the wolf is that you can run everything in called bridge mode.

[33:08] So you can bridge the back 2 burners into one burner, the front 2 burners into one

[33:13] burner, or the side burner, you know, the left or the right into into one burner, and they also have what's called boost. So you can suck the power out of the burner next to it, which you're not using, and jack it into, um, into one

[33:28] burner, and, and it's kind of, it's fairly powerful. So, like, uh, you know, the, the, the smaller ones go between 2100 watts, which is still more powerful than any plug-in induction, and 3000 watts

[33:41] and boost, and the big one goes from 2600 watts to 3700 watts. Uh, which is good, it's powerful, uh, in boost. It looks good. People seem to like it. What I'm curious about when you put those things in bridge mode and have 2 burners running and try to put like a roasting pan across it. I wonder how even the heat is because they look, uh, it looks kind of like the, like the elements are round, but people seem to enjoy using it. The other thing I'll note, and this also goes for the Bosch, is that neither of them appear to allow you to control temperature, which is kind of interesting.

[34:15] They all go by power ratings. And one of the nice things about induction is if you put proper sensors in, now, they won't be as accurate as

[34:23] the Brevel one that I'm using because they're not going to have external,

[34:28] you know, like pop-up sensors like the Brevel one does, but you can put like something under the ceramic to do basic sensing of

[34:34] temperature. And you could also have a jack so that you could have a temperature monitor monitor. I'm just a little surprised that they don't give you a temperature as well as

[34:41] a power, but maybe no one does that in a cooktop because the Bosch people don't do it either. But it seems like a good unit. The Bosch unit is really, really an interesting setup because what they do is they have a large round burner in the

[34:54] middle, and then on the left and right, they have rectangular burners that are divided into 2 sections. So you have a, like a, like a front and back, left and right, and then a big center one. And the interesting thing is that the layout of them is can also be bridged together so that they're one, you know, either a full left side or a full right

[35:13] side. You can't do what the wolf does. The wolf allows you to do all 4 as one, a big 17 inch thing, which would be cool if you had a large

[35:24] cast iron griddle, let's say. But these allow you to do strips along either side. And I actually saw an exploded diagram of it. And the actual elements are kind of dual oval elements. So it should probably be fairly even over the entire width of that

[35:42] element, which is nice. Now that gets me, the only downside I really see about the Bosch is people seem to say that they don't like how the controls work for it. And since you're going to be using it every day for all of the cooking that you're doing. I highly suggest that you actually use it. I'm going to say the same thing about the other one. Find someone somewhere that has a unit running that will let you run it. They should have some, here in New York, they even have some places that have all of their cooktops hooked

[36:10] up. But, I would be very curious how even the, um, the wolf one is when you're using non-round pans on those things in

[36:21] bridge mode. If they're even, then fan freaking tastic. But they draw the burner shapes round, which leads me to believe that the elements themselves are round. I'm also curious to see how even it is on the bosch. If the Bosch had excellent, if people really love the controllers on the Bosch, I'd probably go with the

[36:38] Bosch. But since people seem to really like the controls on the wolf and not on the bosch, then I might go for the wolf, assuming I could get a relatively heating thing. But I would definitely say you have to use it. It's too big an investment to make to not use. Yeah? Right. So, uh, Dave, you gotta, you guys, you gotta start talking about the cookies you tasted while I eat them so that I'm not making mountains. I'm waiting for you to breathe, you know? I'm breathing. All right. Yeah, the Cheeto one. Not a fan. I'm also not a fan of Cheetos to begin with, though, so, yeah, I don't know. They tasted kind of stale and brittle, and that didn't really work for me. But I have one here called Fugazi, which is getting me really excited. And I think it's like some kind of, is there mint in there? Is there a description of that one? The fugazi? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that one's pretty good. I can't find Roxanne. You have to put on the red light. I was chewing or I would have said it for you. Do you not like Cheetos? No, never did. Any kind of like cheese puff snack. I'm not a fan of. I just had the pikin. not that spicy. The spice builds at the end. Yeah, it's not spicy. It's kind of smoky, but not like a ton of heat to it. All right, so Nastasia is trying to find that they... think that came here. that Roxanne now is going through my head. You're bringing the Fugazi back in here for you. What's in the food, guys? and 5 spices. That's in the Roxanne and the Fugazi, it's. Oh, because the red hots, red lights? Oreo cookies, York, peppers, patties, and cardamom. You like your peppermint patties and stuff? Did you say cardamom? That's what that is. There's something else in there. I couldn't tell what it was. Do you do like your carpet patties? Do you like them in the freezer or not? Really? That was my favorite candy as a kid. Freezer or not freezer? None. Huh. Are both of you non-freezer candy people in general or do you like any sort of freezered candy? do not. Really? I mean, if it's got ice cream inside of it, then sure, but. But you don't like that super hard frozen candy bar thing? No, it's got to have a little melt to it. It will melt if you chew it. immediately. I like how you, I like how usually I'm the immediate gratification guy and now you're

[38:53] like, must be immediate melt or it's all worthless. It's just a, you know, I don't want to have something like rock solid that I'm chewing on.

[39:02] It's not it's not ideal. Right. Hey, Stas, can you do me a favor? Can you check our email and see if Johnny Hunter got back because I asked him if someone asked a question on smoking and I might put that off for next week because I want to get Johnny's opinion on it. So Martin, if you're listening, we're going to do your smoking question next week because I just want to, I want to verify something. Wait, do you mean, like, by 1128? Did you look by 1128? I looked, I didn't look after I got on the train. No, I'm saying can you check now and see whether Johnny got back to us? Well, he sent something in 1128. Oh, yeah, that's it. All right. So, like, uh, I'll read it. take a break in a minute and I'll read it. Okay, Andrew writes in. I pretty new to the show, but I've already learned so much. I was hoping to see Dave at Harvard on Monday as I'm living in Boston right now, but I wasn't able to make it. Anyway, I make a cocktail with honey syrup, one to one honey with water. By the way, one to one honey with water. Uh, is not, uh, it's, it's, that's a very light syrup. I wouldn't go one to one honey with water. You're adding too much water, and I think that's part of, you want 640 grams of water for every kilo of honey.

[40:08] I repeat that again. 640 grams of water for every kilo of honey. And the reason is, there are in every kilo of honey, there is already 18, 180 grams of

[40:20] water. Right? Okay. Whether you care or not, that's the truth. Uh, and lavender infused vodka. It tastes great, but in order to have the amount of honey flavor I want, I have to add a lot of honey. This makes a drink super sweet. Um, I want a clear honey flavor without the sticky, impossible to drink multiple sweetness. I'm also interested in the use of honey flavor and savory dishes without a huge addition of sweetness. I know you guys have answered a similar question with the distillation of floral notes of habanero peppers. And if you would answer this question before I apologize. I have a lot of catching up to do in the podcast, but otherwise any help will be great. Thanks so much, Andrew. Well, you could go for like, if you want honey flavor without the sweetness, you could do distillation. I'm pretty sure I

[41:01] used to do rotovap stuff of honey, although I can't really remember it. Um, you could also use, uh, you could ferment out some of the sugars and use a mead that's on the dryer side, right? And that's going to have, although the honey notes will have changed. But one of the main things is, like I said, don't do one

[41:17] to one to one, do 640 to a kilo. And then by adding less water, the entire thing will be shorter, right? So you're still going to have the problem because to get a whatever level of sweetness, you're going to add however much actual sugar from the honey.

[41:33] So the real solution to your problem, I believe, is going to

[41:37] be, um, finding a stronger honey. So, like, you know, do like a comparative honey taste, and some of them are much, you know,

[41:44] wildly, uh, more assertive than others. So I don't know what you're using. You didn't mention. Like if you're using something that's relatively neutral, like a clover honey,

[41:53] you know, by switching to something a little more with a little more power, I think you'll be able to up your up your honey game. Do you remember anything we did with uh, with, honey? No? I'm sure I must have distilled it at some point, but I can't remember what the results are. Um, so do you, do you think those, the, and the thing is, the meats, once they're fermented, don't taste 100% like honey anymore, right? But they're good. You could bolster it with fresh honey, and then I think it would be like honey pow, but that's expensive. And it's probably hard for anyone who's not, doesn't have a source already to find the dry meat and they're not, anyway, it's something to think about. Okay. So, uh, could you do me a favor? Can you pull up Johnny's email on your phone so that I can keep the thing up? Okay, we got a question in from, Did you taste all the cookies, by the way? My stomach hurts. I think I had too many cookies Too many cookies. What's the one I have in my hand that you handed me, Nastasia? Um... I think that's the Karen. Karen. Did you have Fugazi yet? Maybe I have Fugazi. No Fugazi's down here. All right, listen, why don't we take a quick break? I chew on this, read Johnny's thing, and then I'll come back and answer this question.

[43:43] And we are back. All right, so it turns out, Martin, I am going to answer your question. Um, I, I like, a lot of times, like, if I haven't done something specifically, I like to just ask people that actually have rather than give advice out of the blue,

[44:02] right? So Martin writes in, hi, Dave. I'm about to build myself a smoker slash dryer to make cold smoked jerky. It kind of sounds vaguely like cold smoked jerky. Sounds like a little, there's something vaguely sinister sounding about it. Jerky. I think jerky. I love jerky. You like jerky. It's one of the few things that you actually like. Do you like, do you like the fibers to be short or long? Sure. So you like, you don't like to have to like rip your teeth off. You don't want to have to, like, get dentures. Well, actually, I guess, like, you know, you want a jerky that could be eaten with dentures. That what you're saying. Okay. Denture friendly. Denture friendly jerky. I kind of like it in between. Anyway. I want to put a humidistat and a thermostat into it as well. The thermostat is for microbial control, and the humidity stat is to ensure that I can reproduce the end product consistently. And then what do you think my process should be? Should I do? Here are the choices in chat room, you can chime in on this too, because I know you got some smokers out there. Should I do a 2 stage where I won cold smoke and then 2 dry, or a 3 stage where I won hot smoke for my

[45:11] microbial control, 2 cold smoke it for additional flavor, and then 3 dry, or should I do the smoking and drying in a very controlled way all at once? And can you give me tips on the design? And then you ask, what do you think of this smoke generator? And it's a German one, Borniac. So I don't have any experience with it on anyone that's used it, but I like that word Borniac. Uh, it sounds like a maniac smoker, right? But it's basically just one of those auger screw feeds where it has like a low

[45:38] temperature element and it feeds the stuff past the burner, creates the smoke and has a long tube so that the smoke can cool down, which seems

[45:47] fine. I'm assuming you're going to put it into something like an old fridge or a box that you're going to

[45:52] make and a bunch of people sell controllers for it. And it should be fairly straight forward on that. But as for your procedure. Here's what I asked Johnny, I was like, what do you think on safety? He says, there can be an E. coli risk if the meat isn't cooked. But if you do an acid wash, then you can lower it. The feds, i.e. our federal government, say you have to cook beef through. That being said, it's almost for sure safe to cold smoke and dry, says Johnny Hunter coming in. I also said, look, the real issue here when you're smoking, right? So when you're making jerky, you just season it, you know, do whatever you're gonna do, season it, and then you dehydrate it, but remember, it's never in an anaerobic environment. So you're never in a situation where you have to worry about, um, botulism or anything like that growing. The real issue is when you're taking something uh, and putting it in an anaerobic environment, which, you know, smoker is, can be anyway. And then, um, And then not heating it to the point where you're going cold, where you're not heating it to destroy botulas and

[46:57] botulism can in fact grow while it's still moist. And then because you're not heating it again afterwards, you're not wouldn't deactivate any toxins that were created in the product while it was smoking. That's theory. I don't know, right? And apparently also, Johnny says there's an coli, well, there's obviously coli risking beef to begin with. So anyways, what you could do on the botulism front, if you really

[47:19] wanted to keep it cold 100%, is you could just nitrate it, right? And then nitrating is going to prov along with the salt. That's going to prevent any botulism growth during the cold smoke phase, and then once you're drying it out, then you're drying it out in an aerobic environment, you should be fine.

[47:32] Anyway, those are my thoughts. Um, we have time for one more or we, uh... All right. So we have a question in, and this is actually, this is the one that came with a long question alert from Shy. Because it's more of a follow-up, which I enjoy. Where are we? Nastasi, my brain has been turned off. I can no longer find things. Hello cooking issues. First thing, a while ago, I asked how to prevent plums from getting bitter during baking, because remember, there was a problem where the plums on cooking turned more bitter in a plum tart.

[48:05] And I said that there's a bunch of people online that have that problem. Anyway, I followed your suggestions. And so taff of the chopped plums in milk, uh, in milk and the other soaked in water, then drained and baked them. Sadly, the experiment failed as none of the plums got bitter at all. Hmm. Well, that's not really failure because you didn't have bitter tart. It seems like a success, although you know what you didn't do. You didn't do a control with no soak at all. Like maybe you were leeching out some of the stuff that caused the problem. So you didn't have a full control there. Anyway, um, The experiment failed as none of the plums got bitter at all. So I guess it had to do with the variety. ripeness and growing conditions, which almost uncertainly did. Almost certainly did rather. However, the milk soaked plums did keep a little more solid and firm. quite interesting. Could that be the calcium in the milk? I doubt there's enough of it to make a difference. Well, I don't know. First of all, the plum is relatively acid, so I don't know how much of the

[49:02] calcium is going to be available after whatever happens at the kind of acidic barrier between the plum and the

[49:07] milk. It's a question for someone that's actually studied that rather than someone who's just, you know, making it up as I go along, which is what I would be doing if I said something. But your questions about milk. First, I really liked brown milk solids that form in clarifying brown butter. Nastasia, you brown butter fan? Yeah? I feel like I used to make brown butter a lot, like, I guess because I used to make Madeleines a lot. Do you like Madeleines? They're a good pastry, right? Need to be fresh. You know what I don't like? Everyone, remember? Like, I mean, I think it was Danielle or someone. They used to hand you the Madlen at the end of dinner and you would eat it right then. It was like fresh. Like you wanted Madlin to be fresh. I love a fresh Medland. Anyway, brown butter, but there's always so little of those solids. Is it possible to add plain milk or cream to the butter in order to increase the amount of solids? Um, Well, no, you mean, no. Because you need to make the, you need to make the, you could. Okay, look, you could add it maybe to the cream before you

[50:04] turn the butter, right? But the easiest thing to do would probably be just to add milk solids to the cream before you do

[50:13] it because you don't want to add a whole boat ton of water to extra water in the milk to the

[50:21] cream before you turn it to butter. But I'm sure you could increase the solids content of the butter by just jacking the amount of milk solids that are in it. Uh, hell. Heck, I mean, you might even be able to just add milk solids to the butter as it's cooking and just burn them. But it won't be the same. Obviously, that's cheating because they won't agglomerate the same way. Um, Second, what causes some labneh cheese, which is, I guess, the same as Greek yogurt. You like Greek yogurt sauce? Yep. You ever go to the Greek yogurt place that's near your house where they make it and it's like super duper thick? those guys who are like some Turkish stuff and some Greek stuff? So good. They make really good stuff and they have really good taramos a lot. That's like the best taramos lot I've ever had in my life. For those of you, taramasolata is that Greek thing with like the with like the fish eggs in it. It's kind of creamy. And the stuff that they sell on the supermarket shelves is, like, rubbish garbage compared to, like, the real deal stuff that is made fresh. So if you're in New York and the international, if the international grocery is still in business. Are they still in business? Do you every walk by there anymore? I don't walk by there anymore. Anyway, on ninth Avenue, best tear muscle out I've ever had in my life. They also make their own Batarga. Do you like Patarga? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anyway, okay. Sorry, back to the question, because I know we're on our way out. Second, what causes some lab net cheese to be pleasantly bitter. Now, I've never noticed bitterness in strained yogurt products like Greek yogurt. you ever notice it? Any bitterness? I've never noticed it. This is not a flavor I've noticed in other sour milk products, but it's similar to that found in some aged cheeses from what I've

[52:00] read, this is related to protein breakdown. I would like to be able to induce it when I make my own strained yogurt. Well, uh, again, I haven't tasted, so I can't really say one thing I can say is that in situations where

[52:11] you are moving a lot, a lot, a lot of the water, uh, and the denser it gets, the more way you're

[52:16] removing and way is inherently sweet because way has more lactose in it. And so maybe what you're noticing is just a reduction in sweetness, which should pump up the sourness because

[52:25] there's more sour solids there, but also maybe that you're picking up on some flavor that's being masked by the lactose. That my only guess, and it's just a guess. And lastly, for Nastasia on the way out. One more thing. If I remember correctly, Nastasia should be back from Naples. I plan to visit there in a couple of months and would appreciate hearing about your trip. Anything? Wasn't worth it. don't go Wow. Nastasia in a, really? Didn't like Naples? What other cities were you there on that trip? Uh... none that I would recommend. Wow. Normally, an Italian file, people, but for some reason, not a good trip. Nastasia. Well, you said... Okay, Nastasia had a bad trip. I have been on a, been with Nastasia on bad trips, people, and she will judge a whole city by whether she had a good time on a particular trip and it's just who she happened to be sitting next.

[53:19] So Naples don't take it personally, cooking issues.

[53:34] Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.